


Carmen and Pector Bake Some Premade Pizzas

by Griffon12



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: ADHD, Main Character is Short, Pizza, Roommates, Slice of Life, literally just a couple hours on a friday evening after work, non-romantic rommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-08 04:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20315254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griffon12/pseuds/Griffon12
Summary: Carmen the hedgehog, native of Soleanna and getting bored of it, goes home after a long day of doing nothing at work. Her roommate is there too.





	Carmen and Pector Bake Some Premade Pizzas

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Recalibration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16904955) by [DisrepairHouse (KittenFuzz)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittenFuzz/pseuds/DisrepairHouse). 

Carmen sat idly and stared in a random direction at nothing in particular. Her hands were placed side by side on an object directly before her, and she used them unaware to beat a rhythm in time with her stereo. Her car stereo. The hedgehog stopped spacing out and returned reluctantly to reality, finding herself idling her car in her assigned parking space at home. She sighed deeply, twisted the key from the ignition, and climbed free of her vintage hatchback car.

The drive home through downtown Soleanna had been easy, for a Friday evening. Though she had only left the office about 35 minutes prior, work was all but a distant memory already. Carmen's only care at this point was getting in a little relaxation before game night started.

The sun was beginning to set over the City of Water, casting a beautiful orange glow over the island, though Carmen hardly noticed this as she stomped absentmindedly up to and though her apartment building's open-air lobby. The stairwell and 3rd floor hallways were empty, which afforded her one uninterrupted song on her headphones. Fortunately for her mood (as well as her neighbors closest to the stairs) the shuffle gods played a 70's Japanese disco song from her mp3 collection. Her stomp had long since faded to an amused saunter by the time she reached her apartment, though she had composed herself and sorted her items away before unlocking the door. Dealing with her roommate could be a colorful experience at times, so she'd prefer to be aware of her surroundings at home.

With a swing of the door, it stood before her; her stomping ground in all its glory. To her left, the kitchen was empty, the light was on, and the preheat timer on the oven was beeping ceaselessly. Between that area and her rested the kitchen set, the table covered by what appeared to be a partially completed jigsaw puzzle, one she hadn't seen before. The combination of these two inputs put the once-calm Carmen back on edge almost immediately, so she nearly jumped when her roommate suddenly called out. In a brash but friendly tone, he shouted “CARMEN! How the hell you doin', buddy? How was work?”

To Carmen's right he sat, a large blue crocodile stretched comfortably over the living room sofa. Carmen whipped her head toward him, her ponytail whipping as she did so. “It's Friday,” she blurted out as she started for the kitchen, “third best day of the week, my dude. How long have you been letting this stove go off, Pex?” Pector the crocodile's expression turned suddenly perplexed, and he leaned forward and pondered the answer long enough for Carmen to silence the alarm. “I mean I guess I noticed it between tracks a few minutes ago. I dunno.” He stood up and moved toward the kitchen to join Carmen, who had set about preparing a meal. He continued, “by the way, I think there's a message for you.”

The base for the landline phone sat on the kitchen counter, and sure enough there was a flashing 2 on the answering machine. Carmen glanced at it, but turned toward the fridge and asked “Hey, could you hit that for me? I just washed my hands.” Pector did so, and the room filled up with the electronic voice of the answering machine. “Two new messages. First message.” Carmen was pulling two pre-made pizzas from the bottom shelf of the fridge when her brothers voice erupted from the phone's speaker. “Hey sis, mom wanted to know if she was gonna see you at the festival this year, or if you were gonna ditch again, uhhhhh.” Carmen had already stopped dead in place and was now rolling her eyes dramatically toward Pex. The boyish voice continued, quickly now, “Oh, and uh, uhhhh, yeah, uh. I can't make it tonight, bye! Have fun! Bye! Hi Pector!” Rather than a click, a loud scratching and rumbling could be heard, followed by muffled discussion. Pector reached toward the phone's delete button, said “Hi Oscar!” and waved his hand at the phone before moving on to the next message.

“Next message.” A brief silence filled the room as Carmen shut the loaded oven, and then a woman's voice. “and you're not even going to-- oh hey! Hi, it's me, Lynda!” Pex, now uninterested, blew a raspberry and returned to the living room. “Hi Carmen, I just wanted to check in, see if you were still up for a movie tomorrow. Call me back so I can convince you to see the sexy vampire one. There's only on-- Oh, ouch!!” There was a sudden, harsh scraping sound, followed by an electronic “Last message.” Carmen, who had been rolling her eyes comically up to this point now recoiled and winced at Lynda's sudden cry, and she wondered to herself what wall or pole Lynda may have run into.

She set a stovetop alarm for the pizzas and began toward the living room, the star feature to the otherwise modest apartment. It was double the size of the standard living rooms for their building, a commodity well worth the tiny bedrooms and near lack of closet space. It was dimly lit, illuminated primarily by the home improvement show Pex had been watching on their big screen TV. Carmen moved past Pex to a circular table with five padded pleather desk chairs, and five desktop computers set up on the table. She took her place at what appeared to be most beat up chair in the bunch and simply collapsed into it, her arms hanging freely over the armrests from her now slumped torso. She weakly kicked off the floor to spin her chair, and as she slowly spun she let out another deeply relieved sigh.

Pector muted the television and asked “Hey so, whatcha doin' hangin' out with that Lynda for? Wasn't she annoying you lately or somethin'?” The hedgehog righted herself in her hair, revealing the freshly created punctures in the padded pleather, her sharp pointed hair dancing free from it's temporary home in the chair. “It's not so much that she's been annoying me lately,” she started. “It's more that she's been annoying since we first met, and I've just been a little less amused with her antics lately than I've been in the past.” Pex chortled, and offered “Y'know, that sounds like a real star friendship to me, man, real solid. Built on a strong foundation of acceptance.” Carmen gave a knowing smirk, knowing Pex took pride in his friendly sarcasm, and replied “Hey man, find somebody else that'll hit flea markets and stupid avocados cafes with me on Tuesday afternoons and we can talk some more about star friendships.”

Pex turned his attention back to the TV and remarked, “Yeah, you keep sayin' that, and I'm gonna keep laughing at you for it.” He turned briefly to see Carmen's gaze of disapproval, then added “Oh, and I suppose your little bro cancellin' means we're gonna have to skip on playin' Battle Guild tonight?” Carmen spun her chair in the opposite direction, visibly irritated. “Aw crap, you're right. We're not substituting him with a random player online again, our team needs him if we want any hope of winning.” She stopped her chair in place, pressed her computer's on switch and asked her roommate, “So, do you know if the twins are still coming? Or do you figure they'll just play Guild at home?”

The twins were a pair of humans in their late twenties, pale in complexion and small in stature. Though they were actually brother and sister, their features and voices were still eerily similar. Pex gave a very pleased grin before offering, “Well that's the thing, since you ask, they actually messaged me earlier. Said they both started playin' Mean Mugs a couple days ago. Tyler told me when they found out Oscar wasn't coming tonight, they were just gonna stay in tonight and play Mugs.”

“Oh, well. I guess that's fair. Our team is no good if there's only four of us anyways. It's their own dumbass fault if they want to team up with random players in a Guild knockoff.” Carmen ran her left hand through her quills, combing them back in the only direction they'd take a lead in and pulling her hair tie out as she did so. She hooked the small band around a fingernail, pulled the other end back to create tension, and aimed the band directly at Pex. “Say Pex, if you'd already been told nobody was gonna come over tonight, why did you set the oven to preheat?” He looked at her and immediately began to shield his face. “Better question actually, why did you let me put both pizzas in the oven?” She had a combative edge to her inquiry. Pector opened his mouth to stammer an answer, but instead coughed up only Carmen's hair tie. In the ensuing coughing fit, Carmen could swear she heard Pex say “I'm hungry.”

Their conversation somehow dissolved there rather than escalating to shouting or horseplay after the hair tie attack. Pex decided to get in a pre-pizza shower, claiming his whole body was drying up in the summertime evening. Carmen leaned back into her chair again, her unfurled quills puncturing the pleather in a now-larger surface area. As she sat alone, spinning in her desk chair in the dark, her mind wandered deep into itself. She dreamed wide awake of driving through town, her imagination painting Soleanna with a vivid array or surreal blues and reds. Streets faded into each other and the vivid colors washed away, and she pictured her office at work, its desk and chairs absent, replaced with a pile of something she couldn't make out. Some sort of debris.

After more time passed than she might have intended, her daydream came to an end, the oven timer pulling Ms Distracted back once more to Earth. She noticed as she got up that Pex had taken his spot on the sofa back, and had turned on a game show. Finding no reason to argue his choice, she hopped toward the kitchen and silenced the timer. She opened the oven to unload it and immediately began to salivate. Somehow she hadn't noticed the pies' scent until this point, apparently to lost in thoughts of weird piles. She shouted to Pex, asking if he wanted to eat at the couch, and was answered simply with an excited SURE. Carmen loaded a few plates with slices of ham and pineapple and carried them to the living room, now taking a seat at the stool beside Pex at the couch.

What came next was something the hedgehog had been waiting for all day; pizza in her face, her home's wonderful air conditioning on her neck and shoulders, and the roar of a large wheel spinning during her favorite game show. She and Pex chewed together, occasionally piping up to shout a futile command at one of the show's contestants. Pex grabbed them each an extra slice during the commercial break, and they were done eating in time to really get involved with the bonus round, both shouting letters confidently at the screen.

With a satisfying meal and show behind them, they shuffled off to the kitchen again to clean up themselves and the mess. They cleaned the countertops and worked an entire pizza's worth of slices into the fridge as leftovers. “Y'know,” Carmen started, “I was looking forward to playing some games with the group tonight, but I dunno. I guess I just feel content hanging out with you, if you wanna do something.”

“Sure, what do you have in mind?” Asked Pex.

Carmen motioned toward the kitchen table they never eat at and said, “Well, I was thinking I could throw a record on a we could get some work done on your jigsaw puzzle there.”

Pector's head twisted toward the puzzle and back to Carmen, his eyebrows raised in a suddenly excited expression. “Wait, what? My puzzle? Oh boy, and I thought it was yours. I didn't put it there!”

“What?” Carmen pushed Pex gently out of her way and approached their table, hopping up on her footstool to get a good look at the tabletop.

She finally took a good look at the puzzle's box, the image on it of a giant flame before a dark background, the flames beautifully rendered in the style of much of Soleanna's traditional artworks. It was clear to her as a symbol of Soleanna's Sun God, but what was unclear to her was literally everything else about the puzzle. She opened her mouth and uttered the only phrase that was on her mind, “What the _hell_?”


End file.
